Friday, March 5, 2010

Daily Happenings

Hope you have been enjoying the drives for the last couple of days as well as the Fireside Chats.

Golden Orb Web Spider on her raindrop web - (Nephila Spp)

It has been raining quite for the last couple of days

which has been a very welcome relief. We would love as much rain as we can get to help us last through winter so hopefully some more will be on its way. This has obviously made going out a little more difficult so we have been spending some time in Final Control answering questions from email and chatting to everyone. One morning Patrick and Herman went down to Gowrie Dam to do something a little bit different for you all with a hand held radio and conducted a different sort of ‘drive’. But the weather has cleared at this point so we shall see what is to come for the rest of the week. But we are always trying to get out there as soon as the weather clears for a great game drive.

Tuesday evening we went out on drive with the rain having cleared to what we could see in the darkness. Jared and Marc managed to very briefly find Mixo but he eluded them very quickly to hunt some impala. For the rest of the drive they found all sorts of other interesting little critters to look at.

On Wednesday we had to tend to our mast outside Final Control. Herman had to strap up with climbing gear and climb the mast to fix the radio antennae. This was to sort out our comms failure from the previous day. But with Herman’s climbing skills we got back on track fairly quickly!

That evening we spend some time with Herman and Patrick at the Fireside chat talking to the rest of the team about the changes that have been happening. These questions were answered by Peter. Caroline then talked about her work and her highlight of the week (comparing life in the city to life in the bush) and how things are coming along.

All the leopards have been a bit absent lately and we were all desperate to try and find them all for you and us to see. Marc and Jared managed at last to find Kurula and her 2 boys on Thursday morning. They found Induna at Treehouse dam with 2 White Rhino. He was crouched on the side of the dam wall peering over the top with a look of intent curiosity. A great interaction!

The days have been fun at camp with Vervet Monkeys raiding rooms and stealing biscuits or trying to grab food from our lunch plates. And having dinners together as a team getting to know one another.